Chicken and Vegetables Soup

This chicken soup works best in cold days, so I usually cook it in autumn and winter, whenever I find the right vegetables that go with it. You'll need some chicken with bone to make a good soup. You can also add some chicken breast, but having two wings or a chicken back it essential when making this type of soup. Then you'll need to have some vegetables: onion, celery, carrots, tomatoes and parsnip are a must. I add a third from a bell pepper, a few slices of leek, and a small or medium potato, but you can skip these if you don't want to have too many vegies in your plate.

This recipe requires a lot of work, so be ready to stick around your kitchen for at least 2 hours. The result is tasty and worths the effort every once in awhile.

I think this soup is better if you use farm chicken. I buy it from the local butcher, who has all chicken brought from a farm in the nearby. Always check if the meat is at least half done before adding the vegetables. Notice that the meat should be already done when you add the potato.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

Chicken - I used 2 wings and the back.

Carrot - 1 big

Celery - 1 large stalk

Parsnip - 1 medium or big

Tomatoes - 3-4 medium (12-15 if using cherry). You can replace them with 250 ml tomato sauce

Onion - 1 medium

Bell pepper - 1/3

Potato - 1 medium or small

Leek - 1/4 (about 10 cm long)

Salt, Pepper

Sunflower oil or olive oil - 1/2 tbsp

Pasta - 30-40 grams

Water - about 2 liters

Parsley - 3-4 leaves

Directions

1Prepare the chicken and put it to boil with 1,5 liters of water. (If you use chicken breast, don't cut it for now into small pieces.) After a while, you'll see it starts making foam on top of the water. Skim it off.

2Peel the carrot and the parsnip, then chop them into small cubes. Clean the celery and cut it into small pieces. Clean the onion and chop it into cubes.

3Into a medium sauce pan saute these four vegetables with 1/2 tbsp of oil for 3-4 minutes.

4When there's no more foam coming out from the chicken and the meat is half boiled, add the vegetables and leave everything to boil on medium fire. If you use leek, add it together with the other vegies.

5In the meanwhile, clean the bell pepper and cut it into small cubes. Peel the potato and cut it into 6 pieces. When the carrot in the soup is almost cooked, add the bell pepper and the potato.

6If you're using fresh tomatoes, peel them and blend them to obtain a thick sauce. Or you can use canned tomato sauce. Add the sauce in the soup when the potatoes are completely cooked. Before adding the tomatoes, I usually take out the back and remove any meat, if it happens to have some. The meat goes back into the soup, but I don't need the bone anymore. You can also remove the skin from the wings, if you don't like doing it while eating. If you use chicken breast, take it out of the soup, cut into small cubes and put it back.

7Add 300 ml water or more, depending on how thick you want your soup to be.

8Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like parsley, you can chop a few leaves and add it in the soup.

9Let everything boil for another 20 minutes. I like to add 30-40 grams of pastina, which is a sort of small pasta. If you want to give it a try, 10 minutes before everything is done, break into small pieces some spaghetti and boil them with the soup.